Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire On the road again.

Best shot I wanted to get of the Little Big Horn River, this was on the Interstate, note the lack of clearance on the bridge. Heck I coulda done it easy, but I try to avoid alarming drivers more'n me just being there already does....



First view of Last Stand Hill, you can just make out the monument on the hill behind the school buses...…



I didn't take many photos of the battlefield, the open terrain doesn't lend itself well to iPhone photography. IIRC Custer came in from the south, in a hurry, never realizing until too late just how large the Indian camp was. Subsequent events have famously become the topic of much discussion; no debate that he detached Reno to attack the south end of the camp while he himself moved north along the high ground, probing for the north end of the camp. The final rush by the Indians over Last Stand Hill at the north end of the battlefield appears to have been over rather quickly.

One cool thing mentioned in the museum was that the partial skull of the mixed-blood Translator and Indian Scout Mitch Bouyer (identified by DNA as well as by facial reconstruction) was recovered from the western slope Last Stand Hill. Bouyer going in on the final attack had no illusions about the odds they faced, and reportedly gave away his possessions to the other Crow Scouts. From what we can tell he knew he was gonna die, but went in anyway. Point of trivia, him and his close friend Thomas La Forge, a White man living among the Crows, had made a pact to look after each other's families in the event one of them died. La Forge did indeed assume responsibility for Bouyer's widow and children, marrying the widow after the death of his own wife.


Here's my best shot of the field, looking down and west toward the river about where the south end of the camp would have been, large horse herds scattered across the plain in the background, IIRC Reno's opening attack stalled out off the left hand side of this photo, whereupon his force retreated to high ground on this side of the river to the south of this point, joined there later by Benteen and his men coming up from the South. Although they were castigated for not going after Custer, my impession is by that time it was already too late. One Captain Wier and a small force did try to go to Custer's aid but were turned back by the sheer numbers of Indians, they did report Indians swarming over Custer's position shooting at men on the ground, so by that time it was likely over.



And a pithy quote from Sitting Bull, I dunno the context.....



And a concluding shot from later that day, me retracing my route of the previous day in the copilot seat of the USS Enterprise AKA my buddy's motor home, on our way back to Great Falls.....